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Personal life

Abraham was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in El Paso, Texas, where he spent his teenage years as a member of local gangs. He attended the University of Texas at Austin, after which he studied acting under Uta Hagen in New York City.

Perhaps Abraham's best-known film work is his Best Leading Actor Academy Award-winning performance as Antonio Salieri in the 1984 film Amadeus. He is one of only three Star Trek performers to have been nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Actor in a Leading Role (the others being Frank Langella and Paul Winfield) and the only one to have won the award. Whoopi Goldberg won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Ghost (1990).

In 1993, Abraham played the villain in the fantasy action film Last Action Hero. He also made a cameo appearance as "Dr. Harold Leecher" (a parody of Dr. Hannibal Lecter) in the comedy National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1. William Shatner co-starred in this latter film, while James Doohan (as Montgomery Scott), Charles Napier, and Whoopi Goldberg made cameo appearances. In 1994, Abrahams appeared in the action thriller Surviving the Game, along with Jeff Corey.

Following roles in such films as the 1997 science fiction thriller Mimic and 1999 science fiction-oriented Muppets from Space, Abraham played literature professor Robert Crawford in the 2000 drama Finding Forrester. April Grace, Matt Malloy, and Michael Nouri also had roles in this film. Abraham's more recent film credits include the 2001 horror thriller Thir13en Ghosts, the 2004 drama The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and the 2008 biographical drama Carnera: The Walking Mountain, the latter of which co-starred Paul Sorvino.

Television

Abraham has worked less frequently in television than in film. He was a regular on the short-lived NBC soap opera How to Survive a Marriage in 1974 and has made guest-appearances on only four episodic television series, including All in the Family, two episodes of Kojak ("A Question of Answers" featuring Richard Herd and "The Godson" directed by Russ Mayberry), and the pilot for A.E.S. Hudson Street (starring Rosanna DeSoto).

Theater

Abraham has amassed an extensive resume of stage plays. His first professional stage performance was in a Los Angeles production of Ray Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. From 1966 through 1968, he performed in the long-running off-Broadway musical, The Fantasticks.

He has performed in many Broadway productions. He made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award-nominated The Man in the Glass Booth in 1968, working with Lawrence Pressman. In June the following year, Abraham acted with Anthony Call in the off-Broadway production, Tonight in Living Color.

In 1975, Abraham co-starred with Stephen Collins in the Broadway farcical comedy The Ritz (Abraham starred in the film adaptation of this film the following year). In 1978, Abraham acted alongside Roy Brocksmith and Wallace Shawn in The Master and Margarita at the Joseph Papp Public Theater.

In 1980, Abraham was nominated by the Drama Desk Awards for his starring role in the Broadway production of Teibele and Her Demon, in which he acted alongside Ron Perlman. He received a second Desk Drama Award nomination in 1992 for his role in an off-Broadway production of David Mamet's A Life in the Theater.

Abraham and Star Trek: The Next Generation regular Brent Spiner performed together in an off-Broadway production of The Seagull in 1980. Abraham and Spiner again worked together on Star Trek: Insurrection eighteen years later.

Abraham returned to Broadway in 1994 to portray AIDS-inflicted attorney Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner's epic two-part masterpiece Angels in America, in which he worked with Megan Gallagher. More recent Broadway credits include Triumph of Love in 1997 and Mauritius in 2007. He has also continued expanding his off-Broadway credits, with performances of King Lear (1996), Trumbo: Red White and Blacklisted (2003), and The Merchant of Venice (2007).

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